How technology can help you with MiFID II

Friday, 17 March, 2017
by Magnus Lindelöf

Infront regulatory updates:
January 3rd 2018 is rapidly approaching and it is not an exaggeration to say that MiFID II will vastly re-shape the financial landscape in Europe. A lot of new opportunities will be created while the new regulatory framework will completely re-shape the business models of several market participants.
Very few industry participants will enter 2018 not affected by MiFID II since the directive more or less cover the entire range from unbundling of research, investor protection regulations for market participants to technical details such as clock synchronization.

As a technology vendor to the financial markets, we are here to help our clients ensuring that they are MiFID II compliant in all services and products delivered by Infront.

In this process we have noticed that even though the basic demands and needs from different clients regarding the implementation of MiFID II are similar in their nature, we are seeing a wide range of individual needs in order for our clients to ensure they are compliant with the regulatory framework.

The flexibility of the Infront sell side solutions allows clients to interact with a brokers underlying system in an efficient way ensuring data needed for order originator, decision maker, power of attorney and other fields ensuring MiFID II compliance throughout the entire process of order placing and receiving executions.

One other topic we often run in to while discussing MiFID II with clients and prospects is transparency. How to deal with the demands for increased transparency, mostly in non-equities but also in equities. How will the current way of trading instruments which has been almost exclusively traded OTC be affected? What is Infront doing in order to enlighten and take advantage of the increased transparency demands? How will Infront handle and utilize the new landscape post MiFID II.

A recent study by Greenwich Associates found out that 46% of investors dealing in fixed income now trade some of their volume electronically, that’s a significant increase from 36% in 2016 and even more significant when comparing the 11% in 2011.

The fixed income space will change dramatically in 2018. Vendors such as infront must ensure that we are there, able to present solid tools which gives them the tools they need for pre & post trade transparency. New venues such as OTFs will will add even more trade data to an already large universe of orders and trades. The wide set of both OTC and listed data in Infront gives us great opportunities to create tools for our clients which gives them the capability to actually make use of the new transparency regulations.

If you want to hear more on what we are working on ahead of MiFID II or hear how we can help you and your clients come January 3rd, contact us today.